In the eyes of much of the world,  the Australians of today are a relaxed, self-confident people, at ease with themselves.  Which makes it very strange that many Australians — and in particular those who take it upon themselves to represent the country’s conscience — spend much of their time agonising over what the world thinks about us, and convincing themselves that we are in the doghouse.

Recently, this aspect of the national psyche has been having a field day as editorial writers, columnists and sundry intellectuals fret and wail about what is happening to our reputation because of what has been happening here concerning refugees.  A recent editorial in Sydney’s Sun Herald was expressing the current orthodoxy in those circles when it declared: “Once again, we are being condemned at the court of the world opinion as callous and inhumane.” (Note, by the way, that “once again”, making it clear that this has not been seen as an isolated act of delinquency.)

At one level, this sort of obsession may represent a form of vanity, in that it assumes that the world is constantly scrutinising and reacting to events in Australia.  As anyone who has lived abroad knows, this isn’t so.  Indeed, in many parts of the world for long stretches of time good peripheral vision is required to be aware of Australia at all.

When the country does get attention, as often as not it is either to record some natural event (bushfires, most recently), or in the form of glowing praise in the travel, sports, cinema, or food and wine sections of newspapers.

Has the refugee issue really changed all this?  Who is it exactly who regards us as “callous and inhumane”?  Who is it who sits in “that court of world opinion”?

Is it perhaps Japan, which is notoriously hostile to accepting immigrants?  Or is it China, with its improving but still very bad record on human rights?  Or India, which operates an informal caste system and has made a practice of burning villages in Kashmir?  Or again, it might be Indonesia’s shock at our behaviour that we have to worry about, now that it has stopped killing people in Timor and only occasionally indulges in assassination.

Add to these four countries an Africa soaked in its own blood, a Middle East that contains no democracy other than Israel and Turkey, and a Latin America that has still not completely kicked the habits of dictatorship and torture, and one has accounted for more than three-quarters of the world’s population.

But, of course, these are not really the countries that Australia’s intellectuals have in mind when they talk of “world opinion”.  In so far as they have countries in mind, they are talking about those of the West, that is of Europe and North America, which together account for only about 13 per cent of the world’s population.  It is before the West, in particular, that Australia should feel ashamed.

Or should it? As far as Britain is concerned, we have heard of the violent riots in its northern towns last year.  The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has talked of a “climate of vilification” in Britain, and of a racist press and a complacent police force.  After pointing this out in a recent lead review article in The Times Literary Supplement, biographer and broadcaster Caroline Moorehead sums up the situation in and around Europe: “Everywhere, from Spain to Germany, France to Egypt, refugees and those seeking asylum are hounded and reviled.”

She also informs us that in 1999 Canada, that paradigm of political correctness, spent $300 million — 10 times what it contributed to UNHCR that year — on erecting tough barriers against refugees.

So it appears that Europe and Canada are not particularly well placed to pass stern judgment on Australia.  Which leaves the US.  But we can be as sure as we are of anything that it is not judgment by that country that our liberal intellectuals have in mind.  The US is a country to be criticised and condemned, not one to be accepted as arbiter or judge.

What then actually constitutes “the court of world opinion”?  It is difficult to resist the conclusion that its principal and regular members in the eyes of the Australians who so readily appeal to it are a few Left-liberal newspapers such as Britain’s The Guardian and The Observer, a legion of non-government organisations, and the bureaucrats of the UNHCR and some other UN bodies.  In other words, “people like us”.

Others will be recruited on an ad hoc basis, when their views happen to serve the right ends on a particular issue.  Thus the conservative Wall Street Journal, usually anathema to liberals, is useful on the refugee issue because of its commitment, based essentially on economic grounds, to open borders.

Especially prominent in the context of refugee matters is, of course, the UNHCR, represented widely as an objective, dedicated and expert source of enlightenment on these matters.  This is not the picture that Moorehead presents.  She speaks of the agency in terms of an “inflexible bureaucracy, resentful of criticism, run by people more interested in protecting their turf than in devising workable solutions”.  She also mentions in passing that not long ago a number of UNHCR employees were sacked for selling refugee status for vast sums of money.  Nobody’s perfect these days.

The truth is that there is no such thing as “world opinion”, let alone a “court” of the same.  What we have is a variety of contending and shifting opinions, reflecting different values, interests and states of knowledge.  To try to elevate one, or some combination, of these to the status of “world opinion” simply represents an attempt to gain advantage in debate on the cheap.  It clarifies nothing and validates nothing.  And note that those who appeal most readily to its supposed moral authority, as representing a sort of global majority verdict, are the same people who are most reluctant to grant any such authority to the expressed views of a real majority in their own country.

The moral and political problems posed by illegal immigrants and detention centres are real and extremely difficult ones, and there is much to be said on both sides of the matter.  They are issues that exemplify very well the central belief of political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, that the values human being hold are not mutually compatible and in harmony; that choices have to be made, not only between good and evil but between conflicting goods; and that such choices inevitably involve loss and often involve conflict.  This, in Berlin’s view, is the tragedy of the human condition.

Humanitarian care, alleviation of human suffering, and tolerance are important human values; but so are security, civil order, and fairness and consistency in the application of laws and rules — even if their appeal is less obvious until such time as they are not available.  Public discussion would gain immeasurably if it proceeded from a recognition of this.
Unfortunately, “world opinion” is no help in this respect.


About the Author:
Owen Harries was a senior advisor to the Fraser government (1975-82) and was for 16 years the editor-in-chief of the Washington-based foreign policy journal, The National Interest. He is now a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Independent Studies.